Thursday, 31 March 2011

Talking Cr*p Again - Dung-Power Wins Over Sun Power

Some light relief on the energy front before we plunge back into the serious stuff ...

Back in August we noted the DECC obsession with manure, otherwise known as anaerobic digestion (AD), or turning the brown stuff into electricity. Well, Crapper Huhne is a LibDem ...

"We want to exploit as much as is economically possible of the 100 million tonnes of manures [and] sewage"

This oozes directly from a commitment to "promote a huge increase" in AD, contained in the Coalition Agreement - which for a very short document, contained an incongruous amount of highly detailed energy policy - indicative of a long-seated, nay, anal fixation. We can lay this squarely at the door of Tory junior energy minister Greg Barker.

Barker it was who (according to the Register of Members' Interests) received a donation while in opposition from Summerleaze, a firm specialising in AD. And he hasn't let them down. As a minister he has chaired the Anaerobic Digestion Round Table: "anaerobic digestion ticks all the boxes", he gushes.

And in this month's review of feed-in tariffs that reduced the amount of subsidy to solar power, the Treasury opened the sluice-gates for AD: the amount of filthy lucre on offer to AD projects was increased.

Raw politics - like pigs in muck. We're paying through the nose for this obsession: does something smell around here ? We're being dumped on ...

Nick, the HoC & HoL produce so much effluent that they could probably power up the HoP and they could even sell the residue (left after processing) to Westminster Council as a good fertiliser, which could be used to pay mps and lords expenses, there must be plenty of unused space under the HoP for the equipment, also get rid of the booze sellers for more space, they are there to administer the country, not spend their time boozing ;-)

The basic problem with dung power, indeed any biomass power is regulatory. Farmers have shedloads of dung and raw biomass that they could turn into methane, the only problem is that goldplated laws and self-financing inspection bodies want outrageously huge fees for allowing the farm digestors to operate.

Without the fees, anaerobic digestors are just about viable; with the H & S fees, they aren't.

my understanding - garnered from last year's Arup report - was that it is the low energy density of dung, rotting crops etc: which means that you need to (a) collect very large quantities in one place, with attendant & relatively significant transportation costs (b) build hard-standing for the heavily motorized operations on the site of the AD equipment, again with a price-tag

these additional costs seem to be prohibitive

I don't doubt regulatory costs can also be some sort of final straw (sorry, couldn't resist that...)

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